Come to Wednesday’s Fundraising Meeting
By Joyce Westner
Sept. 30 - Winchester News is eligible for a match for any donations received in November and December from our fiscal sponsor, the Institute for Non-Profit News (INN). We’re hoping you can join us on Wednesday evening starting at 7 to brainstorm ways to get donations. If Belmont can raise $300,000, perhaps we can too.
Emily Costello, a member of the Winchester News Group Board of Directors, sent an email to subscribers describing the meeting. We need everyone’s ideas to make our fund-raising successful. If you can’t attend, send us an email and we’ll talk to you another time.
Emily’s email, below
Thank you for supporting Winchester News, a source of reliable local news.
As you know, we’re not about turning a profit or improving the bottom line of some distant hedge fund -- we are dedicated to informing the community about issues that affect our schools, property taxes and quality of life.
We have already achieved some important milestones:
Registered with the state as a Massachusetts non-profit corporation
Launched a website that has attracted more than 30,000 pageviews since July
Built a mailing list of over 300 residents
Formed a board of directors
Applied for EnKa and Rotary grants and collected thousands of dollars in donations from community members
To continue growing, we need more help and more money.
To that end, we want to form a fundraising committee. It will be the job of the committee to strategize how to raise enough money and set the organization on the path to sustainability. We will need to raise at least $150,000 to hire the staff needed to report on our community and run our website. Committing to a print product will cost more.
It’s tough, but we know it is possible. Our neighbors in Belmont have raised $320,000 and they are aiming for $500K. Concord has done even better.
Collectively, we have already put hundreds of hours into this project. Could you give us an hour of your time to share your ideas about how we can get to the next level? We will be meeting in the large meeting room at the Winchester library on Oct. 4, 2023, at 7 p.m. Please join us, and feel free to bring your friends from Winchester to hear about how Belmont achieved so much fundraising success – and to brainstorm what will work in our own town.
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